


all these lonely nights

by nutellamuffin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abused Harry Potter, And honestly, Angst, Angst and Feels, Drabble, Feelings, Hope Lupin is an angel, Hurt Remus Lupin, If You Squint - Freeform, Lyall Lupin Is Just A Trying Dad, Marauders, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders Friendship (Harry Potter), Poor Remus, Remus Lupin Needs a Hug, Young Remus Lupin, and you should too, because i hate that rat, except no peter, hmph, i just have a lot of feelings about rem, maybe he's there but i just didn't mention him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26379127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nutellamuffin/pseuds/nutellamuffin
Summary: the first time remus changes, he is five years old, and his parents don’t know what to do.or, remus lupin, and the many moons throughout his life.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, i mean it's kind of obvious but you know who i'm talking about, if you squint
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34





	all these lonely nights

the first time remus changes, he is five years old, and his parents don’t know what to do. hope sits outside his locked bedroom and listens to him claw at himself, and cries all night long. lyall tries to get her to come away- perhaps not to sleep, but to bear the pain in the kitchen a floor down instead of right at the door- and she does not move. in the morning, the walls are streaked with red, and they are certain he’s lost too much blood. but he has not, he never does. no. remus lives on, and on, month after month, and no doctor can stop the changing.

by the time remus is nine, he wishes he would finally lose enough blood.

he does not.

he does not, and they get a letter in the mail.

* * *

when remus is eleven, his father gives him a pat on the head, a kiss on the cheek, and tells him to hold his head high. the sunlight hurts the biggest scar on his face, bleached white across his nose, and as the freckles darken on the apples of his cheeks, he scrunches his nose away from summer. 

no one knows, his mother says, and no one has to know. after all, he is privileiged to be going, isn’t he? he shouldn’t be scared, he shouldn’t stay home. he has to go, sit on the train and pretend his heart isn’t beating nearly as fast as it is, because he is lucky, because _monsters don’t go to hogwarts._

he goes into the great hall with intentions of doing so, but the candlelight hits his face and all he can think about is the stares _, everyone is staring,_ even when they’re not, and so he casts his eyes to the floor and only looks up when a woman with a hat calls his name.

* * *

remus is fourteen, and he has friends. he has friends, and it has taken him three years, five months, and twenty-one days to believe it, and it happens when he’s sitting under an oak tree beside the lake. james comes across the lawn, throws him an apple he’s nicked from the great hall at breakfast, and grins like all is right in the world.

he has friends, and it settles into his skin with a glance of sirius sprawled out comfortably beside him in the shade, a textbook lying open over his face; james throws an apple at him, too, and he sits up like there’s a fire to find that there is none, before returning the other boy’s grin of sunshine and reaching over to tackle him in the grass.

remus throws his head back, exposing an adam’s apple surrounded by scars to the misty air the lake has kissed, and laughs.

* * *

remus is seventeen, and he knows what love feels like. he thought he knew, before; when his mother would kiss his forehead goodnight, when his father would read his favourite bedtime story over and over, when both his parents wore themselves thin going to doctor after doctor just because they couldn’t bear to see their son in so much pain.

(he didn’t believe that, once. he thought they could not accept their son for who- _what_ he was. he thought they were trying to erase all the imperfections, he thought they were ashamed, disgusted, afraid; but after months of his mother holding him tight while his father stitched up his wounds, and the repeated words and reassurances, he realized it was because they loved him through the darkness lying within.)

he knows what love feels like, he realizes, when he’s staring at the ceiling of his four poster bed, and the memory of lips on his shoulder and arms around him, squeezing tight, has worn itself into the walls of his mind. he knows what love feels like, for he has felt it, he has given it; endless nights lost to kisses that are more like whispers of the wind across his scars, stargazing in someone else’s eyes and feeling as though he could draw a map of what he sees, being lit up from the tips of his toes to the top of his head as if he had drunk a whole bottle of firewhiskey.

remus is seventeen, and he knows what love feels like, because he rolls over in bed and smells cologne on his pillow that isn’t his.

* * *

remus is twenty-one when he has two less friends than he started out with, and an orphaned somewhat-nephew that is taken away from him along with everything else. he looks at his former headmaster like he’s insane when he proposes taking the baby to his real aunt and uncle; who scorned his dear friend and his best mate for something they couldn’t control, much less understand.

he says, _leave him with me,_ and he looks at the jagged scar on his forehead- he knows he has a scar to match, somewhere on his body, yet his arms were made to hold- and the ~~wise~~ old man gives him a sombre expression that he does not need to add words to for his point to be made.

remus is twenty-one and he lets the last thing that remains of james and lily go, and he regrets it for the rest of his life when harry shows up to his classroom thirteen years later with bruises on his body and a fear of cupboards under staircases. he gives the boy a piece of chocolate and teaches him how to protect himself, _because he should have taught james, because this should not be only the second time he’s seeing harry,_ and the boy thinks of his mother and father to cast a stag.

perhaps, remus thinks, watching harry eat his chocolate and look down at his wand, their scars are not the only things that mirror one another.

**Author's Note:**

> listen, it's my personal hc that remus would 1000000% have taken harry, but dumbledore likely didn't think it was a good idea because of his lycanthropy. you can pry this hc out of my cold, dead hands. mwah <3


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